Twisted Metal Retrospective Part 3

989's twisted disaster of the series

Now, I'm going to talk about the 2 most hated games in the series, which happen to be Twisted Metal 3 and Twisted Metal 4. Now, before I begin this, I'd like to say that after Twisted Metal 2: World Tour, Singletrac was bought up by GT Interactive. Sony gave the rights of Twisted Metal to 989 Studios since Sony couldn't agree on a contract. 989 then had to build a new physics engine and source code due to the fact that Singletrac owned the TM2 engine. Now then, let's begin.

On October 31, 1998, we were given the game Twisted Metal III. We were expecting something the best one yet as Twisted Metal was a good game, Twisted Metal 2: World Tour was awesome, so what could Twisted Metal III be?

The story is the same as always, Calypso holds the newest tournament and will grant the winner whatever they ask for. To quote Calypso, "To the losers? DEATH!" It's another world tour like Twisted Metal 2, so you will do battle in Hollywood that was destroyed by the Great Earthquake of 2007. The next battleground is the Capitol building at Washington D.C. You will then do battle at Hangar 18 inside Area 51. Then suddenly, Santa will hate you forever because you'll put the fat guy out of commission when you destroy his house when you battle in the North Pole. Then prepare to search and destroy Big Ben in London. Then you will do battle at the skyscrapers of Tokyo, but watch out for the lava-filled streets below. Then prepare to destroy the tombs of pharaohs in Egypt which never knew a deadly contest would take place in their former empire. Then, prepare for your final battle inside Calypso's personal blimp. Good luck, driver.

Now let's talk about the bosses:

Recognize him, this is Darkside, driven by Mr. Ash. Before I describe the boss. I'd like to point out that in the beta of Twisted Metal 2, Darkside was going to be the boss of the Los Angeles stage, but he was scrapped. He is in the coding however. Anyways, you fight Darkside in Washington D.C. His special weapon is a flamethrower similar to Firestarter's and he shoots a freeze missile along with it. He shouldn't be too much trouble.

We have Minion once again as a mid-boss. The battlefield you will take him on at is London. He fights the same way he did in Twisted Metal 2, so be a little careful with him. His stats are maxed out, and his special will be very powerful. A strategy when fighting Minion is stock up on homing missiles and power missiles and have at him.

This is the final boss of the game, Primeval. He is your final challenge and his battleground is Calypso's blimp. You want to avoid direct confrontation with Primeval as he has access to every Special weapon in the game, akin to Minion from the first game. He also has more armor than Minion despite Primeval simply using a roll cage as a vehicle. Prevail against him to get your ending.

Now, how was Twisted Metal III? IT SUCKED! The multiplayer was still good however, but everything else was just weak. I remember getting this game and I found it to be worthless. It was disappointing.

As usual, here are the endings to the game:

Now let's talk about Twisted Metal 4. 989 must of HATED the negative reviews of Twisted Metal III, so they created a new story, dumping the majority of the original cast in favor of new characters (save for Sweet Tooth and Calypso), and a new backstory for Twisted Metal. Needles Kane (aka Sweet Tooth) is no longer the serial killer that he is known to be, but a complete fanatic for the Twisted Metal competition. The story to this is that Needles Kane takes over the Twisted Metal contest and dethrones Calypso. Sweet Tooth now has Calypso's ring which allows him to grant wishes (Ok, this is a major continuity error as Calypso never wore a ring and Calypso grants wishes because he stole Minion's powers). Now Calypso is a competitor to get the contest back. Not a bad idea as I'd like to see Calypso compete to see what he would drive to win his own contest and here it is: He drives a Soviet nukemobile with a rather damaging special.

The other thing nontraditional with this is that each level has a boss to defeat. The bosses are (in order): Crusher (Construction Yard), Moon Buggy (Neon City), Super Thumper (Road Rage), RC Car (The Bedroom), Super Axel (Amazonia 3000 B.C.), Super Auger and Super Slamm (Oil Rig), Minion (Minion's Maze), and Sweet Tooth (The Carnival). Now, I'd like to talk about Sweet Tooth being the final boss being the hardest boss in the series. His special weapon can kill you in one hit and is the most broken weapon in the series. Bad move, 989.

Once again, here are the endings (before you ask, bosses have no endings in this one):

In part 4, I'll talk about the reason why Twisted Metal never died...

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I am starting to believe that retrojunk has run its course. when I discovered this site 4 yrs ago, it had people responding with positive and negative criticism. Yet it was not as hostile as it is these days. I don't now if its a younger generation coming up or just the over all website community has changed. It use to be fun reading through articles and the comments. Now it just seems like there is always someone ready to argue. I enjoyed the article.It wasn't the greatest, because no opinion piece is. There will ALWAYS be something to disagree with, but the content was good.

I believe it ran its course back in 2010. If you want someone who really gave bad criticism, try the user RetroJerk. He only gave what an article needed work on half the time, while the other half would be lashing out to the article writer.

"Forcing people to be modern"? I'm telling people such as yourself that complaining about the present isn't going to bring anything back, so I don't know why it's so hard for you to comprehend. There's many, MANY other people like me that are fine with things coming and going. I hate to repeat myself, but as I've said before the site is about reminiscing the past, not being stuck in it.

Also don't try to make me prove I'm better at something just because I pointed out a mistake, it sounds so childish. Like I said, I'm an article critic. I'm only doing the writers a favor in motivating them to do better.

I wouldn't stoop to the immaturity of starting a contest just because you guys are getting butthurt over me pointing out a simple error in an article. I don't know what world you two live in where it's wrong for someone to correct someone else at something, but if you could handle it in school then I'm sure you have the tolerance of handling it here.

The fact of the matter is that an article here should be proofread and checked for spelling before getting submitted. That's two examples of what makes an article good.

I only joined this site to read and critique whichever articles pique my interest after being a lurker here since 2007. I know how articles work around here but that doesn't automatically mean I'll be developing my own for that fact alone.